The Case of the Counterfeit Phantom
by Sue Snell
Summary: One month after the night of Don Juan, Raoul awakes to find his wife, Christine, gone without a trace. Knowing this and that the infamous "accidents" have started up again at the Opera House, he's sure he knows who to blame. But this time it's different.


**Disclaimer: Clearly, I do not own Phantom of the Opera. If I did, well, the following story is a suitable example of what may have happened if I did.**

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**Prologue **

The room was dark. Pitch black. Far too dark for Christine, the Countess de Chagny, to even know what nature of room it was. She had brought this gloomy fate upon herself by tiptoeing her way through a large and unfamiliar mansion at night. What made matters worse was that this vast and alien place was, in principle, her own mansion.

Several minutes ago she had broken out into a nervous sweat which had soon been cooled by the chilly night air; now she felt like she'd recently stepped out of a cold shower. Her hands shook violently every few seconds as if to ward off the chill and her breath pushed into her lungs in icy, ragged, bursts. Her nerves were strung tighter than violin strings.

Her uncertain steps led her to bump her thigh roughly against the corner of some table or other piece of furniture. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and the pain her own teeth inflicted was ironically ten times worse than the stab in her leg. Her eyes watered with the ache and the effort of not making a sound. She clutched the edge of the offending table and stood still until the throbbing in her leg and lip subsided.

While she was stationary, she shocked herself to find a set of lyrics calmly playing in her mind. _Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation…_ Were her senses heightened now, all due to this terrible darkness? She pondered this question, almost amused, until a certain sharpened sensation made itself apparent: she heard footsteps.

She stopped breathing, terrified of making even the slightest noise, and listened, even while her mind's ear still heard music. _Darkness stirs and wakes imagination… _Indeed… _Was_ she merely imagining it? Slightly despaired, she realized that she may very well hear nonexistent noises in the dark for the rest of her life, but no, these footsteps were definitely real, and they were getting closer.

_A servant, it must be a servant!_ She realized with a burst of relief; Raoul certainly had enough of them, after all. She didn't know or particularly care what a servant would be doing at this hour, but she kept repeating to herself that the mysterious footsteps must belong to one. And better yet, they now sounded like they were going away. All she had to do was stand perfectly still, perhaps even hold her breath just to be safe, until she could hear those footsteps no more. She waited. At last, silence.

Her heart stopped. She'd heard a new noise.

The terrible noise that startled her this time was not quiet footsteps but the ear pounding tolling of a bell- no- the striking of a clock; she recognized it now as it began to count out the hour. Raoul had an enormous grandfather clock installed in the very room she was approaching. The overwhelming volume must mean she was very close.

As all this sank in, her heart began to beat again. She could swear it had stopped to wait for the clock to finish striking just as she had stood still until the footsteps had gone away. Her ears hadn't quit their function however: It was two in the morning. She carefully pushed herself past another doorway.

If her husband asked, she would say she'd been unable to sleep and didn't want to wake him. She hoped he wouldn't ask. She hoped he wouldn't wake. She loved Raoul dearly, but there were some things she felt the need to keep secret, even from him. _Even from _him _as well,_ she thought, _But why should I think of _him_ now?_

At last she made it to the room she was looking for: the Parlor, or the Sitting Room, or the Drawing Room, or whatever it was supposed to be called; it wasn't as if that mattered. It was the room where Raoul liked to read his mail. And _here_, on the Coffee Table, was a pile of envelopes. _The_ pile of envelopes. Today's mail. Among the pile there was an envelope addressed to Christine. The return address it bore was hauntingly familiar, to her. She had distracted Raoul from ever laying eyes on today's mail. Even so, she would not risk reading her letter, would not risk even touching the pile, until there was no risk of Raoul seeing this envelope and its contents. Strange as this may seem, it is even stranger next to the fact that even Christine didn't know what the contents of the envelope _were_.

Was it her imagination, or was she hearing footsteps again? Surely her imagination, she told herself. Perhaps she was lying to herself. A white lie for her own benefit, perhaps.

She picked up a letter opener, barely breathing, all but clenching her hands into fists to keep them from shaking, and proceeded to open the envelope.

Seven hours later, Raoul woke up to find that Christine was gone.


End file.
